Mortals

The maze-lie, self-referential mind of Ray Finch, introspective to a fault, paranoid, and full of self-doubt may seem like a dubious place to roam around. However, this articulate, anguished, and witty novel is a delight for literate readers. Its complexity mirrors the modern world, and its hero struggles to do the least wrong thing, as right is not an available option.The many witty book titles, little jokes, and ironies alone are worth the read. Better even than MATING. Norman Rush has written a brilliant novel (How pleased Ray would be at that adjective!)--too good for most of the hack reviewers to appreciate, alas, but a landscape readers will want to explore through the entire journey.

Several excellent reviews on this site cover the plot and the characterizations. What fascinated me was the writing style. The dialog between Ray and Iris is 5 stars on target: witty, true, anguished, and showing that for seventeen years each has paid total attention to the other's reactions and thought processes. Frequently Ray anticipates exactly what Iris is thinking or is going to say, and in her next utterance turns out to be completely on target or (less frequently) stunningly and unbalancingly wrong. The word plays and turns of phrase that flood every page convinced me that the author has kept notebooks of arresting phrases he has heard or produced from his own imagination over the last forty years, and has poured two thirds of the contents of these notebooks into this novel, providing a language lover's feast. The most subtle delight of the book is the author's sense of conversational idiom. Not only the dialog, but the narrative stretches are written the way people really talk. As a result, every few pages you encounter a narrative sentence you have to re-read once or twice to understand, because it's written exactly the way someone would say it (without the benefit of intonation that would make the sentence immediately transparent to a listener rather than a reader). As a result, you sit there and marvel at the complexity of how we talk. All this makes the book a slow read for anyone who wants to zip through the story and a delightful experience for anyone who just plain loves language. Yes, it's a little too long...and I found myself wishing it were longer.

Mortals is the product of ten years' work by one of the most erudite novelists of our time. It's no beach book, no weekend read. It's literature for people who enjoy thinking about history, politics, and gender relations. Yes, it helps to have a bachelor's degree (and thus some exposure to that old chestnut of Lit.One: Paradise Lost)and the willingness to slow down and give passages like the following some time to settle:"Kerekang was unified with the suffering that had brought these men to his cause. It was more than a matter of pity, which was the limit of the usual feeling evoked by poverty and injustice. It was sympathy, but a different order of sympathy, it was embodied."I won't give a synopsis of the plot or characters because other reviewers have done it well, though I want to add that I found this book laugh-out-loud and read-to-your-spouse funny, a good balance for the harrowing exploits and serious subject matter in some chapters.Readers who are looking for a novel that gives great reward for close reading will be very pleased with Mortals.

Mortals is a novel about a lonely man whose only friend is his wife, and what happens to him both psychologically and in his real and adventurous life when he begins to suspect that the wife he adores, and depends on for his feeling of connection with the world, is in love with her doctor, a black American physician living in Africa (as do the man, Ray, and his wife, Iris. The novel takes place in the country of Botswana.) Ray's loneliness becomes understandable to the reader, he is a spy for the CIA. He has no close friends, mostly for this reason. There are other factors that isolate him. His only sibling, his gay brother, Rex, and he hate each other. All this is in the background of the obsessive love he feels for his beautiful, and intelligent, wife. She loves him, also. But... her feelings are more complicated than his--and her doctor fascinates her.This novel is a story about obsessive love and jealousy, but it is also an adventure story and a political thriller. Rush seems to be interested in many philosophical and political matters, not to mention in literature and its effect on life. In the sections that interest you, you'll want more of this. In the sections that don't, you'll skim. Personally, I skimmed most of the parts about religion. Seemed interesting, but not necessary, in my opinion. Mortals is worth reading for the prose style alone. It is amazing writing. The perceptions make you want to write things down so you won't forget them. But to me, the exploration of the relationship between a man and a woman was the most fascinating and memorable aspect of Mortals. One other little thing that I enjoyed was the chapter devoted to "The Denoons" from Rush's previous novel, Mating. You get an update of what the heroine of Mating and her husband, Nelson Denoon, are up to and we (at long last!) learn that she does possess a name--Karen. It helped create a bit of continuity that I appreciated, and satisfaction in knowing what became of the characters. This is a book that stays with you. It is both an education and a pleasure. I highly recommend it as a wonderful summer read!

The reason I read Mortals is because the reviews in Elle and Vogue and the Village Voice were really good and I loved Mating. I like Mortals even more. It has more emotional suspense and made me laugh alot, even when what was happening in the plot was awful. It's sexier than Mating. Here's a quote I liked from the Village Voice review. "Morel has said that he longs for "a place where the rude fact that we are all dying animals transfigures every part of life," and Ray has reached that place. He has no time to waste. He's accepted the basic logic that if you're going to put marriage first in your life, you'd better have more in your life than marriage. And maybe, just maybe, he can make that logic work."